Take off, ya hoser! Matter of fact, the guys at the Sun DO cry in their beer over not being Americans yet. That's just later in the day, eh?

The Toronto papers are as follows:

The Toronto Star - tends toward a liberal "everyman" outlook. Dislikes the conservative agenda, and champions social causes and investigations into corruption. Has the best comics page! ;-D My favorite Toronto paper by far.

The Globe and Mail - Tends toward a very sober business and upper class outlook. Has a weighty and prestigious place in the world of print. Fairly dependable on the whole.

The Toronto Sun - slightly to the right of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh - good if you can barely read, but like color pictures. Into sex, violence, militarism, and sensation.

The National Post (?) - Tends toward a rapacious neocon business outlook. It is the paper that makes Conrad Black feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The Star and the Globe are by are the most influential and have been around for a long time. The Sun emerged following the demise of the old Telegram, and it is a hangout for archconservatives, plus the odd true inconoclast and independent thinker (like Eric Margolis, who writes some quite good stuff from time to time).

The National Post doesn't seem to be doing that well, so they may not last too much longer. I won't miss them if they go.

You mean they can't cry in their beer like REAL Americans would? And that other paper, watchacallit, "The Glob and Maul" or something. Why do Canadians have to be unAmerican? You guys need a few groups of the John Birch Society up there. That'd straighten ya out!

We have one Toronto paper that sings the Fox line, Rapaire. It's the "Toronto Sun", and it's probably the worst paper in Canada. Oddly enough, it is the almost universal choice of the poorest and least educated people in Ontario...the very ones who suffer most from a neo-conservative political agenda. The "Sun" appeals to their frustration, their anger, their fear, and their lust...in very obvious ways.

It has a minimum of text and a maximum of pictures and ads. Very little content, but lots of sound and fury, that's the Sun. It also has a daily "Sunshine Girl" who presents herself coyly for the male readers to ogle at. They were accused of sexism over that...so they now have a daily "Sunshine Boy" too. Ha! Almost nobody cares or even looks at him, but he's there just to prove that the Sun is not "sexist".

Too funny.

The other Toronto papers wouldn't stoop to such tawdry means of garnering attention, of course. ;-) They have a tradition of good taste to uphold, unlike the Sun.

"The savvier consultants and their clients understand that the basis of the business is not technological but anthropological — and that this is not always a bad thing. Among human beings, it turns out, the perception of expertise, however unfounded, can sometimes be used to good purpose. As the shamans who poison chickens and the soothsayers who read entrails have long demonstrated, sometimes it is more important to build a consensus around a good decision than to make the best possible decision; sometimes it is more useful to believe that a decision is sanctioned by a higher authority than to acknowledge that it rests on mere conjecture; and sometimes it is better to make a truly random choice than to continue to follow the predictable inclinations of one's established prejudices. Consultants, following in the footsteps of their pagan forebears, understand that they must adopt the holy mien of a priestly caste."

Hey, all, I went to a lecture today by a famous professor from my university who is working on a big International research project at the super collider at CERN and he talked about our old friend Gluon and kept uttering

We called her Harry. See, her father wanted a son to carry on the family tradition of raiding and viking, laying waste to small villages along the Upper River in their longboat: places like Meyer, Illinois and Dumas, Wisconsin (pronounced "dumbass, viskonsin"). She was also a berserker. I remember once she got a poor grade on a quiz in Early English Literature and she carried the Prof's head around on the end of her spear all day long. Being also of Celtic stock she eventually preserved it in cedar oil and kept it on a shelf in her dorm room (she didn't keep roommates long). When she graduated, with a degree in Elementary Education, her father gave her her own longboat and crew. Problem was, she was by then a pacifist (except when the berserker rage was on her) and, because of her name, was drafted. It's difficult to convince a draft board you're a pacifist and CO when you arrive for the hearing wearing the arms and armor of a viking warrior over a bearskin. A week later a new draft board gave her CO status contingent upon her working with the children of poor fisherfolk. Last I heard she'd married a guy named Percival Tweedle and was living in a subdivision outside of Keokuk, Iowa and had 2.6 children and a minivan.

I have to wonder who the poor lass was named after which caused her such ambiguous identity problems. Was it Harald Bluetooth, Harald Harefoot, Harald Godwinson, Harald Brozbeck Illionois, Harald Fairhair, Harald Greycloak, Harald Hardrade, Harald Gille, Mstislav the Great who was called Harald, Harald the Black of Mann, Harald of Orkney, Harald Erilksson, Harald of Norway, England, Denmark? Or some shoe salesman from Winnebago, Wisconsin, descended from these?

In honor of the onset of football season (and by "football", I mean real North American football, as played by large men with few brain cells, not that which our UK brethren call "football" and which we North Americans call "the game children play until they've headed enough balls to kill enough brain cells to play real football"), I have composed...

The MOAB Fight Song (To the tune of "It's a Small World After All")

We will fight, fight, fight for our MOAB thread We will fight, fight, fight for our Ralphs and freds We will fight 'til we're tired, then we'll go off to bed We will fight for MOAB thread

We will post, post, post to our MOAB thread We will post, post, post 'til our brains are dead We will post, then we'll play with our iPhones instead We will post to MOAB thread

We will get incoherent for our MOAB thread We will talk gibberish like some old pot heads Though no one understood a God damned word we said We will fight for MOAB thread

You protest being misunderstood, LH, yet you launch off on a tangent quite removed from my point, which may have been understated. My point was that your "Let's stop watching TV" was an imaginary proposition. Similar to Shane and Chongo in that respect. In reality, to forward what took you only seconds to leak from your keyboard would send you straight into the teeth of billions and billions of dollars of vested interest that go all the way back to Marconi and Sarnoff.

Not to dampen your enthusiasm--just suggesting you gird your loins for one helluva battle if you mean to translate your excellent thought into the real universe.

Amazing! Arthur Findlay Scott refers to the ancient ruins in exactly the same language, claiming it as an ancient Anglo-Saxon inscription. Talk about COINCIDENCE!! Appropriately enough the original title of your self-reflective prosody is entitled "The Ruin". 'T was ever thus...the ruined walls, the soul-less streets, the broken towers and the unpeopled byways, all are legends in their own minds, as they sleep the world by, glorying only in what is nevermore to be.

Well, see, where do you draw the line? LH's playmates are admittedly imaginary, while you keep insisting your unreal identity is who you really are!! Are you your OWN imaginary playmate? How does that work? Enquiring minds want to know...

"TORONTO—All kids like to use their imagination, and many play fantasy games where they pretend to be characters in a made-up world. Some children persist in building especially elaborate imaginary worlds, with impressive depth in terms of histories, taxonomies, language and maps. This detailed, sustained "world play" may be an early marker of broad, general creativity (as opposed to creative excellence in one field such as music), according to two professors from Michigan State University.

Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein—he's a physiologist and she's in the theater department, and both are part of an interdisciplinary group studying creativity—explained the importance of recognizing the breadth of creativity in children yesterday in a symposium here at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. When studying creativity, they explained, most scientists have traditionally focused on a person's main creative endeavor—Mozart's music or Picasso's art, for example. The truth is, however, that most highly creative people are polymaths—they enjoy and excel at a range of challenging activities. For instance, in a survey of scientists at all levels of achievement, the Root-Bernsteins found that only about one sixth report engaging in a secondary activity of an artistic or creative nature, such as painting or writing non-scientific prose. In contrast, nearly all Nobel Prize winners in science have at least one other creative activity that they pursue seriously. Creative breadth, the Root-Bernsteins argue, is an important but understudied component of genius.

For instance, one unanswered question in the science of creativity is how to spot early signs of such polymathy in children. The Root-Bernsteins may have found an answer in world play—their early data indicate a correlation between kids who delve into such rich imaginary worlds and those who grow up to be highly successful adults. They compared self-reports of childhood play among 262 Michigan State University undergrads and among 105 MacArthur fellows (recipients of the "genius award," as it is commonly known—a large sum of money given by the MacArthur Foundation to highly unique, creative individuals in various fields). They found that the incidence of world play was about double in the MacArthur fellows: 5-26 percent had engaged in world play as children or adolescents, whereas 3-12 percent of the MSU students had. The large ranges reflect the degree of stringency applied to the criteria—the higher number includes ambiguous cases that may or may not have been true world play.

Although the data are preliminary, the Root-Bernsteins may have illuminated an avenue for further research into creative breadth. "World play is one of the only early indicators of creative breadth, and also one of the only early predictors of later adult creativity," they said, during their joint presentation."

I must recant again and withdraw all the snarky remarks I have made about Little Hawk's imaginary worlds, and his imaginary playmates, with profuse apologies. I also withdraw all my criticisms of religion, the Roman Catholic Church, Walt Disney Studios, Star Wars, and other worlds of imaginary characters. This may even spill into the Bush Administration although I think it will have to find a sticking point somewhere. Surely, reality-based viewing counts for something...

How did someone as sub-literate as thee ever rise to suchheights of responsibility, Rapaire? To quibble with such an ordinary practice as expanding a contraction when referring to its content is beyond small minded!! It is shockingly un-erudite and woefully counter-articulate of you. I besmirch your repute and cast shame and also fie.

"Just imagine what great shape our economy would be in if they did away with television altogether!"

That is one of the most wonderful ideas I've ever heard of! Let's do it!

Amos has completely lost whatever it he once had. The word "us" does not appear anywhere in LH's post (quoted in full above). Yes, there is a shortened form implied in the word "Let's", but most people would have written, "'s" instead of "us".

Poor Amos. I knew him, Bee-Dubya. A fellow of infinite jest. He has peed upon my leg a thousand times....

Then, sir, you have no grounds for whining about BWL; the remedy to your karmic reversals is entirely in your own hands.

In addition I use polynomial vector differentiation to defuse mis-ownership, and quantum disentanglement to undo bleed-through from unwanted co-creation. Plus a few other kit tools of a very obscure nature.